


The Sky Waves, Beckoning

by Zabbers



Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 03:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2606639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zabbers/pseuds/Zabbers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When heroes die. A hero's afterlife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sky Waves, Beckoning

It hurt, but only for a moment, a white-hot searing flash of pain as though his body couldn't put him into shock fast enough, and an overwhelming and sudden pressure that crushed him and rent him into unfathomable pieces, all at once. And then it was like his soul burst apart and he was a thousand, a million bits of energy, expanding more quickly than the explosion could, expanding only as something no longer bound to the physical world could, escaping it all, escaping the pain and the lies and the constant, lonely vigilance that never seemed to be enough.

And he knew that he was dying, no, that he was dead, and he was angry--so angry, that it could have been worse, that a lot of people could have died, that these people couldn't leave well enough alone, and that he hadn't had time, never enough time--but for the moment, it was all right, because this was the most exhilarating thing in the world. This was more exhilarating than anything he had experienced in a long, long time, possibly ever. He was everywhere, all at once, and going everywhere, at velocities far outstripping even light itself, and he was free of himself and wholly himself, unshackled from this human bondage.

He wondered if it was like this for everyone, or if by some metaphysical irony, he should be grateful to a bomb, and to a terrorist.

There, moving ever outward through the sky and the earth, commingling with the thing he thought must be what was called grace, he reached the limits of coherence, identity slipping away with the rapidly dopplerising sound and the blurring outlines of London, Britain, the world. One more beat of his soul's heart, and he would have his release.

But then.

But then: the elements of his being began to draw back toward one another once again, called by something familiar--a siren song, a war horn, there, in the distance--and he sat up with a gasp, which was wrong, blinking into a sun that had the quality of burning ice.

"Adam?" God. It was Fiona. The slim, brown-haired woman who crouched by his side was his wife, dead almost three years, and she was radiant with the light of that sun, her skin bronze against bronze armour, or a copper-coloured suit. "Adam, look at me. How do you feel?"

Her eyes searched his face keenly, and he reached up to cup her cheek. "Fi--I don't understand. Where are we? This isn't-- What's happened?"

Something like sadness brushed her features, but it was with a delighted smile, the smile of someone letting you in at last on a wonderful secret, that she spoke. "We're dead, Adam. This is Valhalla."

Val--? No. No, no, no, it wasn't meant to be this way. This wasn't how death was supposed to go. He knew, he had known, soaring with the currents of reality. But the memory had begun to fade, so fragmented had he been, and now so definitely Adam again. He couldn't be sure; maybe it had only been a dream, dreamt in the moment of dying, and even the details were unclear to him now, confused and unreal. 

Valhalla, improbable as it was, was real. Fiona's touch on his shoulders was real. That sun; real.

"Come on, see if you can get up." Fiona slid her hands beneath his arms, helping him to stand. Adam struggled to his feet, though it was easier than he might have expected, all things considered. He felt stronger every moment, and found he could stand even without her help, if he minded his balance. 

The sun glared a little less brightly at this height, and Adam had a good look round, taking in the infinitely large building before them, its gilt roof and towering façade. Behind them, a wood, also seemingly infinite. They stood on a dusty path that looked very good for running. His inspection complete, Adam looked down at his wife. And then he smiled.

It was a wet smile, a smile with tears in it. "Fiona. Oh my god, Fiona."

He swept her into his arms, buried his face in her hair, and he realised with a start that he was sobbing, messily, babblingly. "I'd lost you. Fiona. I'd lost you. You were dead."

Fiona pushed away just enough so she could look him in the eye. Her expression was stern, but her voice was gentle--or was it the other way round? "I am dead, Adam. We both are, you and I. You have to accept that. But we're in a better place, see?"

Down the lane, there was a sound like a brace of horns. Fiona brought her hand to her ear. "This is Alpha One. ... Yes, got it. We'll be right there." 

Fiona's own smile was just as Adam remembered, mischevous, warm. He had missed it so much. "Let me show you what this place is all about," she said, and grabbing his hand, she pulled them into a run.

It was easy, this running, impossibly easy, and that more than anything else began to drive home to Adam the idea that he had left his mortal body far behind, in the twisted and smoking wreckage of an exploded car. It was like running in a dream, and as in a dream only a moment later they had reached the end of the lane and approached a small gathering of professional-looking men and women, seated, incongruously, at a conference table under a glade. It seemed to Adam that he might have recognised some of them, but he wasn't sure.

"Everybody, this is Adam Carter," Fiona announced to them all. "In life, a brilliant officer for both MI:5 and MI:6, and certain to be an invaluable asset to us."

Adam went into stranger mode, instantly turning on his charm--and his caution. He greeted them with a chuffed expression. "All right?" 

"Introductions later," Fiona said, sliding into the seat at the head of the table and turning to a man in a three-piece suit. "No time now. What's the situation?"

"The enemy are in the city. We're not sure how or where they are currently, but there was an explosion at the north bridge."

"Have they made demands?"

"No, but you know they're always after the same thing."

"Right. Okay, we'd better speak to all our informants, try to find out just what they're planning. What do you think, Adam?"

Adam had found a seat of his own, but he hadn't expected to contribute to this meeting. "Well, I'm not at all familiar with the situation, but--" But he was drawn in to the conversation, and it was so simple to allow the familiar work to occupy his thoughts, so that he almost forgot they were sitting under massive ash trees, or that Harry was not there, or Malcolm, or any of the others who had come and gone.

And when they went into this city--which might have been Jerusalem--for their counter-espionage action, he didn't care that he was dead, or that this was not what he had expected of death. It was everything that had brought him to the intelligence services in the first place. The thrill of the chase, the satisfaction of using his cunning and his skill against equally accomplished foes, the seduction of winning, of protecting his city, and the land, against those who would see it destroyed; these things had made him love being a spy, and here, he felt them, just the same, though it was not _his_ city or _his_ land, his Britain. Only here somehow he didn't have to fracture himself, didn't have to put Adam Carter in a box, and Fiona was by his side--what joy!--once more after so long. And he was happier than he had been since she had died, happier than he had been since he had been a boy, playing at war with his best friend on the grounds of a vast estate.

It was only later, in the mead hall, that it caught up to him. The man in the three-piece suit had swaggered up to the place at the long table at which he and Fiona were sat. "So, Amahl, where'd you recruit this one?"

"He was my husband," she replied. "So when he died, it only seemed right. And I told you he'd be good."

"You? Amahl? A husband? I thought you were only interested in one thing. No time for work-life balance."

Fiona shook her head, patting Adam on the arm. "No, Adam predates all that. I did have a life, Donald, when I had a life."

Adam thought the joke in rather poor taste, really. When Donald finally moved away, he caught Fiona's eye. "What did he mean, that you were only interested in one thing?"

Fiona paused, one of her tells. "Until today, I didn't have any family here. So what was there to balance? But now you're here."

For now, only for now, Adam would not push her, not on this. There were other matters at hand. "And what about Wes?"

"Wes..." Fiona's face fell, and for the first time since he had woken to see her above him, Adam thought he saw her true emotions. "How is he?"

"He was doing well. Getting very good at rugby. He made First U12 team at his school this year. But now...I don't know. What happens to a boy whose mother is shot to death by a former lover when he is eight, and whose father is caught in a car bomb explosion when he is eleven, even if he doesn't know the lurid details?"

For a long time, Fiona said nothing. Then, "He has his grandparents."

Adam slammed his cup down angrily, sloshing mead onto the ancient table. "No! What's the matter with you? You would never have said something like that--before!"

"What would you have me say, Adam? That I miss him every single day? That I worry about him constantly even though there's nothing I can do about it? We're dead. We didn't go on holiday without him or leave him at school so that we could go traipsing about the world on some reckless operation. We can't decide one day to go back and hug him and love him and tell him everything's going to be all right. He has his grandparents. It's the truth, and it's all we have to take comfort from."

It was true, but it was not at all mollifying. Fiona took too much pleasure in this place for his liking, ignored too wilfully the unpleasant things that should have mattered.

"Like picking petals off a flower, you said." Adam's voice was low, echoing his spirits. "Perhaps you were right, and it was selfish of us, to have a child."

Fiona turned away abruptly. "We're going to hit the enemy tomorrow. A pre-emptive strike. We'd best prepare for that. We need your contribution. It made a massive difference today, and will do in future operations."

They didn't sleep in Valhalla, not to speak of. They caroused in the mead hall long into the night, wandering off by ones and twos as the need arose, and passing out under the long tables and in front of the bright fire when they were done. They all seemed to know the Norse songs. They all had stories, for they were all warriors, of one sort or another. And they all wanted to know how Adam had died.

But he wasn't ready to talk about that, or he was too muddled about the chain of events, and eventually the curious and charmed began to grow bored and get the message. At length he was completely alone with his mead and his thoughts. He was troubled; Fiona had been here for almost three years. She avoided all suggestions that anything was wrong, but Adam wondered how long she had fought it when she first arrived, how she had to be broken into giving in. Most of all he wondered how long he would fight it, and what would break him.

It was like the worst of interrogations, insidious, deceiving you into accepting rewards you did not want, relentless. 

Everyone broke eventually, but it was usually a question of how long you could hold out, and whether you could be put back together again afterwards. Here, there was no afterwards, this was eternity, and his awareness of that alone made resistance all the harder.

Toward the end of the evening, Fiona came to him and drew him away. By then he had worked himself from anxiety through anger into a helpless melancholy. He was nothing without the hope and the secular faith--in himself, in the Service, in Britain and in what was Right, saving lives, defending the realm--that he had clung to in the dark times of his life. He was pliant to Fiona's desires, their row overshadowed by his deeper fears. They fumbled together in the dark at first, shy after the long absence. But then something fell into place, and there, in a dark corner of the hall, like they were young and reckless again, it was as though she had never been away.

In the morning, Adam discovered that although he could run forever in the afterlife, and he could drink endless amounts of mead without fear of a hangover, the regenerative powers of Valhalla did not extend to cricks in the neck from sleeping all piled up on chilly flagstones. Groaning, he picked himself up, rolling his neck. All around him, he saw the fallen--what did they call them? The einherjar--waking with looks of disillusioned weariness, only to shake it off with fierce, tooth-baring grins.

That day, they achieved their objective, and the day after that, and the one after that. Fiona's team were exuberant, congratulatory, vocally glad to have Adam with them. Some days later, after Adam had lost count, they had their first failure, as he had known they must.

It was an ambush, and a slaughter. Five lay cut down by enemy explosives, including Fiona. While the other survivors seemed unmoved, Adam stayed behind, shocked, not quite weeping.

And startled back when Fiona shot upright, sucking in air. Her eyes wide. His, wider.

"It's all right, Adam. It's all right.'

Only, it wasn't. And when he lay bleeding and healing fast on an Elysian pavement in his turn, Fiona stroking his sodden and matted hair, it wasn't all right then, either. He saw nothing good in dying over and over again, for whatever cause. Much less one that seemed to have no point. What was it that drove Fiona so intensely? Trauma? The hunt? Revenge? 

So when she helped him to his feet, he refused to run. "What's the point here, Fiona? Why are we doing this?"

"But don't you know? We're preparing for Ragnarök."

The battle at the end of the world. But Ragnarök never came, and at any rate it was an event of gods, not of mortals, however heroic they had been in life. And Adam didn't want this. He had conquered fear long ago, and with it, death, except here death kept him prisoner.

Death kept them all prisoner. In the close air of the overfull hall, revelry sounded like screaming, and a smile looked like a rictus. Beneath skin, they were all skeletons. Adam, disgusted, excused himself for a walk. Outside, the setting sun shone as it had when he had arrived, smelting the trees into bronze. He squinted into the light, and thought he saw a quiet, dark sky.

"You'll give yourself a headache, staring into the sun like that." 

Adam turned to see his wife leaving the mead hall, looking wary.

"I'm done here." The dark beckoned, like relief.

Fiona's expression turned accusatory, and hurt, as though she had been betrayed. "Adam."

Adam sneered suddenly, fed up and angry and frustrated at a Fiona who wouldn't let go. "This isn't death. This isn't Valhalla. This is Purgatory."

"I don't want you to go," she said, querulous.

He reached for her compulsively, held her in a way that it seemed he hadn't, all this time here. "I know. That's the hardest part."

He smiled; he understood. "You could come with me." How much more perfect it would be, to dissolve into a being that had Fiona in it as well. 

"I can't--there's Wes." Only an excuse.

"Let him go, too."

"This is all I am, now." Because she was afraid.

"It doesn't have to be. Remember when you were more."

They would be so much more, when they were a part of everything. Like a part of a zeitgeist they wouldn't have to leave behind. And everything after that, as well, forever and never. All was dissipating now, giving way.

"Will we remember?"

"No. But we won't need to. They'll remember for us. We'll be in the world."

"Adam, it's beautiful."

"I know."

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal, 21 August 2009. Thanks to faynia for beta-ing


End file.
